1. A very good morning to all of you.
2. I have been watching the school's building and development for the last few years. During the Covid days, I cycled by here quite often and saw the school being built from scratch.
3. Today, I am very happy to be back here to join all of you to commemorate this occasion.
4. I will start off by saying that we really want to give thanks and to salute three groups of people. First, I would like to give thanks to and salute the pioneers of Rainbow Centre. We started on this journey almost 40 years ago. We started with much less than what we have today. They built it up from scratch with their hard work, and help from supporters and donors over all these years, Rainbow Centre has continued to grow from strength to strength, serving and touching the lives of many. Thank you to all our pioneers who are able to join us today, and for those who are not able to, we would like to remember their efforts all these years. Thank you very much.
5. Second, I would like to salute the pioneering spirit of the Rainbow Centre staff past, present, and in the future. If you look at the development of Rainbow Centre over all these years - with the finite resources that they have, everything that they do, is done with a lot of thoughtfulness. A lot of thinking goes behind it. It is never about a cookie cutter solution trying to just take what we have done and scale it up. Every little bit of design in a new school, including this one, shows a lot of thought into the kind of learning environment and experience we want them to have, and also the kind of environment that we want the families to have. If you look at this campus, there are many pioneering features. It is not just about the infrastructure, but also about the programming. And one of the things that really struck me is that there is perhaps a subtle, but to me, a significant change in the concept. In the past, it may be fair to say that if there is Rainbow Centre in the community, we are seen as another school in the community. Today, the concept of Rainbow Centre is quite different, particularly what you see here. It is not just a school in a community, today it is a community in our school, because it is not just about us going out; the community is also coming in, and that provides a more authentic learning environment for our children. It also mobilises the community to work with us in order to better the lives of our children and their families.
6. On that note, I would like to thank Dr Lim Wee Kiak, the grassroots and the community partners in Sembawang, Canberra and Woodlands for joining Rainbow Centre in this journey. Rainbow Centre is not and will not just be a school in the community, we hope and welcome the community into our school so that we can have a more authentic environment for our children. And I will say that it is not limited to the Sembawang, Canberra and Woodlands area. Today, many of the donors, friends and supporters of Rainbow Centre come from afar, but they bring with them capabilities, and connections that enrich the lives of our students and staff. Thank you very much.
7. Last but not least, I would like to give thanks to all the educators and staff of Rainbow Centre. You are the heart of everything that we are able to achieve. Without each and every one of you and your tireless, selfless contribution, we will not be here today. Whenever I visit a school, I usually spend most of my time with the staff, and I arrive a bit earlier to see how the school functions, how the children come into the school, but most importantly, how the staff come into the school. When the staff are happy, and they come into school with a smile, with a purpose in their hearts, I know the children will be well taken care of. This morning, I was able to see that. I want to thank you all for your tireless energy in taking care of all our staff and for being here with them. Thank you very much to all the staff and educators here.
8. Over the years, the staff, too many to name, but I will just name a few – Mrs Sharifah Masturah Shahab-Yokoyama, Ms Eileen Oh, Ms Poon Soak Ching, and Ms Martina Wu, we saw them on the video just now – they are just a sampling of the many people that have made Rainbow Centre work, and made the lives of our students that much more fulfilling. Going forward, I do not want SPED schools, including Rainbow Centre, to work on your own because as a sector, we must come together to synergise our efforts so that we can all progress as a sector faster together.
9. Today, with the hard work of many of the SPED schools and your support, we are going to announce two new schemes to bring the energies and ideas of our SPED community together. Going forward, we will not be 25 separate SPED schools, but one SPED school community, helping and working with one another to move forward together.
10. Today, we will launch the SPED Leadership Development Program (LDP). This is but the start to grow our own people. I look forward to the day all the leaders in the SPED schools will have parallel training and leadership development opportunities, just as those in the mainstream schools have, and the leaders in our SPED schools and our mainstream schools have the porosity to learn from and support one another. Today, about 50% of the SPED school leadership comes from MOE mainstream schools. But this is not enough. We need to make sure that the porosity starts much earlier, and I would like to have parallel training programmes for the SPED school leaders, just as I have for the mainstream school leaders. This is one of the outcomes that I am happy to see. Earlier this year, I had met up with all the 25 SPED school principals, executive directors, board chairs, and encouraged us to work together – this is one tangible result of that discussion. I thank all the board chairs of the SPED schools, the executive directors, the principals, for working with MOE and MSF to bring this about for our SPED school leaders. Thank you very much.
11. The second thing that we have been able to do since the beginning of this year is that we will also launch the SPED Communities of Practice (COPs) which will involve our social service agencies. I have always said that we cannot work individually. We need to bring our capabilities together so that we learn from each other and we can progress much faster. SPED is not monolithic. Within the SPED school itself, there are many sub specialisations that are required, and we need to make sure that our energies are focused so that we can do the maximum for our children with the resources that we have. Going forward, there will be many new practices that will come on board and will appear on the market in the sector. We need to have that professional creed amongst our SPED educators to know what is most effective and what is most efficient. That is why we need to raise the professionalism of our SPED educators, not individually, but collectively. I am happy to say that with the support of the SSAs, the board chairs, the executive directors and the principals, we will come together to form Communities of Practice for the different SPED sub specialisations so that we can all move forward together. We hope that one day, the SPED sector and the sub specialisations will have a reputation that is as strong as what we have in NIE and NIEC.
12. Today, people come to Singapore to talk to us, share with us, and discuss with us the latest pedagogical practices. They come to NIE for the schools; they come to NIEC for the preschools. In August, we also launched the Adult Learning Collaboratory (ALC), an initiative under the Institute for Adult Learning (IAL). The three are amongst the key pillars of our pedagogical practices. But there is a fourth, and it must come from SPED, whereby we have a four-legged stool, each leg to support the entire school system, each playing its role, so that as a whole education sector, we can move forward together. I hope that the Communities of Practice will be a catalyst for us to keep growing the capabilities in this sector. I look forward to the day we can stand tall and contribute our ideas to uplift the sector in Singapore, and just like NIE, NIEC and IAL, that we can stand tall in the global world where we have some of the best practices we can share with others.
13. Today, we plant the seeds of what we want to see in time to come, and I am sure with the efforts of all of you here and many others in the SPED school community, we will be able to achieve that. Once again, I would like to thank the pioneers who have started us on this journey, the pioneering spirit that we have been able to continue, and most importantly, I want to thank all the educators and staff, including the allied educators and the therapists – all of you are the people who make the SPED school possible. All of you are the ones who continue to touch the lives of our students, day in, day out, despite the challenges. And from what I saw this morning by how you came into the school, I have every confidence that we can work together, support you and move forward together as one SPED community. Thank you very much.